WHITE FOX

Alexander Vasin returns for the last installment of the trilogy that began with Black Sun (2019).

Having stepped on some powerful toes in his previous adventure (Red Traitor, 2021), Vasin has been assigned the command of a vestigial prison camp in the deep reaches of Siberia, where, insufficiently brutal by nature, he coexists uneasily with his more effective second-in-command. Then his KGB boss, Gen. Orlov, saddles him with Andrei Fyodorov, a special-status prisoner to be kept secret and alive at any cost. When a gang of Chechen prisoners riots and takes over most of the camp, Vasin, Fyodorov, and a small group manage a tricky escape during which Vasin learns what is special about his prisoner. Fyodorov claims to have been ordered to recruit Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and to have documentation proving it. Though he refused, feeling Oswald was too unstable, the assassination took place. The documentation is of interest to many people: Fyodorov wants to leverage an escape from the Soviet Union, a KGB faction wants to suppress it and kill Fyodorov, and Vasin sees in it an opportunity to get back to Moscow and possibly topple Orlov. After the escape from the Chechens, Vasin and Fyodorov conduct a cross-country hide-and-seek dance—Fyodorov keeps escaping and Vasin tracks him down, but because Vasin needs his cooperation, Fyodorov is never clapped in irons or just shot. While the previous volumes of the trilogy are rooted in historical fact, there is no history underpinning this story, and perhaps because it does not have a predetermined endpoint, the whole enterprise feels a little formless. Matthews is reliable in matters of setting and details of Soviet life, but the narration lacks focused energy.

A slightly shaggy conclusion to a generally worthwhile enterprise.